WowWee Tribot Robot

Of all the WowWee robots, I think Tribot is more fun than the Robosapien and far, far beyond WowWee Robotics RoboPanda. After being disappointed by Robopanda, we were really excited to see how Tribot would build off that failure.

Tribot does not look as human as WowWee Robosapien with Mini Robo - Silver, but it moves better, quicker, and more efficiently. The three-wheel configuration works great!! The biggest innovation is the tilt-sensitive remote control combined with a very intuitive remote which makes it much simpler to operate than Robosapien.

Like the RoboPanda, the sarcastic dialogue might get tiresome, but its not as immediately annoying. Still, there is something familiar and friendly with Robosapien's grunts. I wish Tribot had two modes to allow users to choose coherent or incoherent dialogue!! Uh-huh!!

This toy is wonderful, my son has been asking for it all year. Finally we bought it. It's huge its fun. He ABSOLUTELY loves it. The only catch is it's a battery eater. After putting 8 batteries in him the first day. The very next day he's saying his batteries are low. That's all he will say I need more batteries! I highly recommend anyone buying this toy buy rechargeable and take the time to recharge him at night.

I can't remember the last time I was so utterly disappointed with a toy to return it, but this robot did it. It is such a half-baked product on so many levels.

Let me get the positives out of the way first - the three-wheel omni-directional drive is neat and gives the robot great mobility.

That's about it.

Negatives:
* The controls are annoying - IR is good for remote controlling your TV, but not motion control; IR has too much delay, its range is too limited, and requires line of sight. All remote controlled toys should use RF. The IR control is very laggy and sometimes plain unresponsive. For example, Even though the robot is capable of of some pretty neat maneuvers due to the wheel design, it is nearly impossible to accurately control the robot - just trying to stop at the correct angle when spinning in place is frustratingly difficult. The tilt control is gimmicky at best.

*After you play with the robot for a while, you realize just how utterly simple the toy is, there is no depth. So it can record and playback your input. So what? Given how inaccurate the controls are, even if you did record your control input, the robot will not be following the same path on playback because of how imprecise it is. So what's the point of playback? The roaming free feature is also poorly implemented and of little value, as the robot will just sit there grinding its wheels against an obstacle that's too low for it to "see". In the end, the play value of this robot is not much more than that of a remote controlled car, but even there the IR control system will aggravate you to no end.

* If you look at the robot on display, you might expect for it to have a bit more motorized features. But actually it doesn't. Other than that the wheels turn, eyebrows, ears, and a little light pops out on occasion, nothing else on this robot is motorized. Not the arms, not the torso, and not the neck joint. It will sit in whatever pose you put it in.

* The robot has to be played on a hardwood floor. Yes it will run on carpet, but it will be very slow and sort of sway back and forth as it moves around. Its wheel design depends on being able to slip around. And if it runs full speed into an area rug edge, it will tip over.

After letting my kid have at it for 3 days, I decided it was not worth the money. It is just a poorly designed toy.